Poor Little Bucket Head Dog

It may have looked like a crime scene from CSI, but the blood all over my house had a perfectly reasonable explanation. You see, dear Nadine and I were playing with one of her toys, and, like she loves to do, she took it and ran outside. Soon, I heard a terrible screech like she was in pain. Nadine then came to find me in the living room and she was whimpering and holding up her paw. When I touched it, I found her paw was dripping blood.
“She’s bleeding, Mommy!” my eight-year-old son freaked out.
It was then that Lucy, my pug, thought I was in need of rescue, and chased Nadine away from me. After shutting Lucy in another room, I again tried to examine the wound, but couldn’t tell where all the blood was coming from. Benji cried and thought Nadine was going to die and I held him and reassured him that Nadine would be alright. While holding my son, I wrapped the paw in a cloth and applied pressure.
After calling several neighbors to come and be my eyes, I finally got a hold of Emily- always great in an emergency. She could see a deep cut between the pads of Nadine’s paw. She and my son also combed the lawn to see what Nadine may have stepped on. Their best guess was a tent stake sticking out of the grass.
“Kris, you have big pock-a-dots of blood all through your house.” She informed me.
Well, the blood on the carpet would have to wait. Off we went to the vet, and Nadine ended up needing to go under anesthesia in order to get stitches. It was so hard to leave her there.
The rest of the day was spent scrubbing the house. There was even blood on the walls and on the kitchen and laundry room floors. I’m so glad Lucy decided to chase Nadine through the house! Thank heavens that a friend came over with some carpet cleaning equipment and extracted the blood from the carpet.
Several hours later, we picked up my injured guide doggie, and brought her home with her paw all bandaged. She was attired with a lovely plastic cone around her head. It was pretty pathetic, my poor bucket head dog. She would need to wear the bucket to make sure she couldn’t reach her paw and lick or bite the stitches.
She was in a lot of pain the first night and it was so sad to see her suffer. Each day she is getting better, and I can tell she is tired of being in the cone of shame.
She and I have had a rough week. I’ve been her guide dog around the house, because she runs into things with her bucket. It’s even hard for her to come up stairs due to her catching the edge of the cone on each step. She tries to be playful, but I can tell she’s not been herself.
Tomorrow I take her back to the vet, and I sure hope everything has healed fine. It’s time to free her from her bucket, and get back to real life. I also hope that she picks up the guiding again quickly. We’ve got things to do and places to go. Cute little Nadine has been a trouper!